Teaching Literature during a Pandemic-Induced Empathy Deficit: A Narrative Medicine Approach to Pedagogy

These notes from the field describe one instructor's experience with adopting a narrative medicine‐informed pedagogy in the literature classroom during the COVID‐19 outbreak. It examines how the chronic stress of surviving through a pandemic can contribute to an international “empathy deficit” and how an attitude of receptivity and co‐intentionality—paired with reading fictional stories about health and illness—can buoy the empathy reserves of both students and teachers.